WEBVTT

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On Tuesday, I watched
a 27-year-old man

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hold an electric
toothbrush in his hand.

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His fingers fumbled
a bit at the switch.

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But he flipped it, then sat
astounded as the dry brush

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shimmied and jumped in his palm.

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This run on batteries, he asked?

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Turning it upside down, his eyes
lit with a toddler's wonder.

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Perhaps you see nothing
amazing in this.

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But let me paint a
picture of this man.

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His chest is impossibly
plumped, thick and rigid,

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his skin mapped
with stretch marks

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where the muscle has
exploded beneath.

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His shaved head, a field
of gristle and sweet spray,

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is peppered with gouges where
the blade sensed his blood

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and slipped.

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He is a child of
single syllables,

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grunts just under the radar.

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I need to eat.

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I'm real tired.

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Think it's going to rain.

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I like that shirt.

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He is my son, crafted of fevers
unleashed in jailhouse iron.

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And now with a
clear beyond cry, I

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see that his
punishment was never

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there among the scabbed
tattoos, sluggish clocks,

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and open toilets.

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His sentence began in the
free, in that moment when

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he turned a cheap chugging
red toothbrush over

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and over in his huge hands
and said, look at this, ma.

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Wow.

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Look at this.

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